Eventualities
by Blazed
Summary: Hermione's thoughts years later...maybe added to later


They had become different after the war. Without the threat of impending death at the hands of a madman (gleefully predicted by Sybil Trelawney, the old hag) she had come to realize just how much.

During their school years they had bonded. After all, no matter how strange and different she may have felt, something about being rescued from a smelly, disgusting mountain troll had appealed to an inner princess she didn't realize she possessed. *heh* Who would have ever thought she would feel like the damsel in distress waiting at the top of a tower?

Still, between insane reptilian madmen, giant spiders, mountains trolls, giants, dementors, snakes, rats and death spells (Oh My!), they didn't have time to really realize how different they were. Adversity drew them together, it made them into the people they were today. Maybe she should have gotten some clue earlier, when they reacted so differently to the same stimuli. Questionable broom shows up in the morning post-do you get it checked for malicious spells or do you jump on it and go zooming into the air? Questionable books shows up containing spells which can slice through someone's flesh with no more than the wave of a wand? Wave that wand and see what happens or investigate the book's provenance?

Once their ultimate goal was removed, they had focused on more mundane goals. Grow up, get a job, get married, have children, lather, rinse, repeat. She realized, once the furor had died down, that she liked being different. She had long ago accepted that she just wasn't like your average person. Hell, she wasn't like your average wizard. Spend enough time alone at the lunch table or having to stop in the middle of conversation because people are looking at you as though you've gone crazy and well, you have to either learn to accept yourself or go mad.

Harry, however, had had the opposite reaction. He had spent so many years being the center of attention, unwilling or not, that he spent all his time after the war desperately trying to fit in. Anything to not mark him as the one who slew the Dark Lord, the one with the too big clothes who lives under the stairs. He had made normal into an art. Find a surrogate family? Check. Meet the perfect girl of your dreams? Check. Having her be part of said surrogate family? Bonus points. It was the wizard equivalent of marrying your high school sweetheart. Hell, Ginny had been in love with Harry since she was a child blushing and spying on him from the far end of the dinner table.

This was not to say she was criticizing his choices. She understood, intellectually at least, how a life like his could drive you to extremes of conformity. Still, for her, it rang…untrue. She had had more than her share of the media attention (one article by Rita Skeeter was enough to do that to anyone, much less entire special issues of the Prophet) but melting into the background just wasn't an option. Nor did she think these ideological differences would be enough to kill a friendship that had been through death and beyond.

At least, she had thought so. But eventually they had begun to drift. Between the little "everydays" of work and errands and things, they rarely had time to meet anymore. When they did see each other it tended to be at Weasley family events; birthdays, christenings, weddings. Each of which became a nightmare for her as seemed to have made it her personal mission to help her "settle down". Originally everyone had just laughed off her attempts, even Harry. But lately…he had joined in. Not just silently chuckling or absently nodding his head but vocally agreeing with Molly. At the last major event, Charlie's birthday, he had even gone so far as to corner her over the punch bowl and not so subtly extol the virtues of the settled life. What the hell had he been thinking?

It was the kind of move she never would have expected from him. It had practically been a lecture on the virtues of stability. After her initial burst of anger, she just found the memory sad. The thought that they could drift so far and change so much was almost frightening. At this point she really did know what to do, other than try to get some sleep and hope for a resolution or a spark tomorrow.

There was always tomorrow…


End file.
